QUASI-SYMMETRIC FUNCTIONS AND MOD p MULTIPLE HARMONIC SUMS

We present a number of results about (finite) multiple harmonic sums modulo a prime, which provide interesting parallels to known results about multiple zeta values (i.e., infinite multiple harmonic series). In particular, we prove a “duality” result for mod p harmonic sums similar to (but distinct from) that for multiple zeta values. We also exploit the Hopf algebra structure of the quasi-symmetric functions to do calculations with multiple harmonic sums mod p, and obtain, for each weight n ≤ 9, a set of generators for the space of weight-n multiple harmonic sums mod p.